Post Colonialism

The genesis of post-colonial theory is usually dated to the publication of Edward Said's 'Orientalism' in 1978. The 1980s was a period of inception and exploration for this new 'discipline', and the 1990s was the period of its maturation and institutionalisation. The latter decade ended with a variety of books (Ania Loomba's 'Colonialism'/Postcolonialism 1998. Leela Gandhi's Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, 1998 and Bart Moore-Gilbert Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics 1997) setting out to comprehensively introduce and review the field.

Responding as well as contributing to successful institutionalisation, these three books present a convenient codification of a field that had by then attained a certain visibility and stability. At the same time, all three books also conclude by suggesting the possibility that in Moore Guilbaud's words, 'the postcolonial 'moment' has been and gone.

At the conclusions of these books, an implicit question is posed after post-colonial theory, what? Though post-colonial theory might very well have reached certain conceptual impasses, it would be inadequate to consider this question simply as a symptom of disciplinary exhaustion, a variety of institutional and historical developments, too contribute to the urgency of this interrogative spirit.

Virtually from its inception, post-colonial theory has been confronted by spirited critiques from many quarters. The most effective of these have been made from Marxist positions. There has been a particularly contentious relationship between post-colonial theory and the Marxist accounts of the post-colonial world.

Each has set out to explain the colonial and post-colonial world from significantly diverse positions. Not without reason, certain Marxists have regarded 'post-colonial theory' as the introduction to post-structuralist positions into the theoretical consideration of the third world. The earliest extended expression of this Marxist displeasure with post-colonial theory is Aijaz Ahmad's 'In Theory' (1992).

It was soon followed by Arif Dirlik's 'The Postcolonial Aura' (1997). Both these books argue that post-colonial theory is an intellectual phenomenon, is largely of Western provenance, and is part and parcel of Western intellectual history. These books seem to be an exploration of post-colonial theory.

Beyond PostColonial Theory' (1998), is, indeed, the title of a third book, by E. San Juan Jr. that sees itself as a conscious successor to the work of Aijaz Ahmad and Arif Dirlik and aims to context post-colonial theory on its own turf by demonstrating the superior effectiveness of Marxism in dealing with the cultural and social phenomena of the post-colonial world.

Where Ahmad and Dirlik set out mainly to critique postcolonial theory, San Juan's objective is to render postcolonial theory obsolete by advancing alternative and more adequate theoretical positions. San Juan does not deny the newness of the present historical conjecture and therefore agrees with the need for theoretical innovation.

However, he regards Marxism as the best source of the principles according to which such innovation might be attempted. San Juan inventories and contests in his book many of the central theoretical innovations and contributions of post-colonial theory hybridity, subalternity, and strategic essentialism.

He finds in post-colonial theory a 'liberal individualist ethos geared to the 'free play' of the marker and observes that 'the repudiation of foundations and objective validity. undermine any move to produce new forms of creative power and resistance against globalised inequalities and oppressions.

Against the enthusiastic importation of notions of fragmentation and discontinuity from post-structuralism by post-colonial theory, San Juan unabashedly posits the totalizing analysis of Marxism. In pursuit of a holistic perspective on post-colonialism, he links the notion of 'postcoloniality to 'globalisation' and 'diaspora', suggesting that the condition of the post-colonial world cannot be adequately accounted for without reference to the latter two - (mainly, but there are others as well) terms.

It is in this trajectory of San Juan's argument that we might find some clues to a general answer to the question after post-colonial theory: what? For, though he has given one of the most systematic articulations of the need to amend post-colonial theory by reference to new terms and historical events, the recognition of the relevance of 'globalisation' and 'diaspora' to post-colonial theory is certainly not restricted to San Juan. It would be more representative of the mood of interrogation and disciplinary exhaustion gaining ground to post-colonial theory to present the journey beyond in more general terms than simply as a symptom of Marxist critiques.

For example, the three introductory texts presented at the outset all conclude by raising the question of globalisation in the context of their presentation of post colonial theory as a strategy of reading. All three note that the methodologies widely, if problematically, recognized as distinctive of post-colonial theory have been perfected over a textual terrain, the literary and historiographical archive of colonialism and its immediate aftermath.

In this overwhelming textual context, it is not surprising that the most influential traditional disciplines contributing to post-colonial theory thus far have been literary criticism and history. If the distinctive methodologies of post-colonial theory require an already existing archive, how will they respond to the still unfolding challenges of globalisation? 'The textual accounts of globalisation, understood as the increasing interpenetration of regional economies in the wake of 'free-market' policies of liberalisation' or 'structural adjustment programs', across the world, are only now being produced, it might very well be the case that the most interesting work with regard to formerly colonised, societies might now come to be done in the social sciences.

Certainly, the most widely cited critical works on the cultural dimensions of globalisation have been produced thus far by anthropologists and sociologists, by such figures as Arjun Appadurai (Modernity. At Large, 1996), Will the challenges of globalisation overwhelm the methodologies of post colonial theory? Will these methodologies be rendered obsolete as globalisation takes on a more and more urgent character? Or will globalisation force fresh methodological Innovations within post-colonial theory? Whatever might be the answers to those questions, globalisation poses a serious challenge to post-colonial theory as it is presently constituted.

A similar challenge emanates from the set of issues cohering around the term 'diaspora. As a critical term, diaspora works in a complementary manner to globalisation. The post-colonial period has been marked by a steady flow of immigrants from the former colonies into Europe and North America so that there are now substantial 'minority' populations there, constituting an increasingly significant postcolonial diaspora.

That these immigrants, too, represent a dimension of the post-colonial condition is readily apparent, for example, in the literary example of Salman Rushdie, a writer who can at one and the same time be described as a post-colonial writer from India and a diasporic writer from Britain. While some of this immigration predates the period of globalisation, the presence of such immigrants has become evident only more recently, and the continuation of this flow of bodies from the former colonies may be linked now to the expanding effect of globalisation.

Post Colonial Theory has certainly not ignored the question of diaspora. Homi Bhabha has written on various diasporic issues. The most significant contribution made by post-colonial theory to contemporary criticism might very well in the future come to be regarded as the exploration of the silence of race in an international context. The post-colonial theory has enriched considerably our understanding of the functioning of racial categories in colonial as well as post-colonial contexts.

Finally, discussions of post-colonial theory should also recognise the particular structure of intellectual work in the North American academy, which in many ways remains the primary venue of post-colonial theory. The thoroughly commodified nature of this work produces its own dynamics of obsolescence and restless innovation.

If there is something called postcolonial theory, the North American academy ordains, sooner or later, it must be succeeded by something called postcolonial theory. Without gainsaying the validity of the historical and theoretical reasons, reviewed earlier, behind the various desires to move beyond postcolonial theory, this, dynamic, too should be acknowledged in discussions of postcolonial theory.

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Post Colonialism